Paper Music Problem

I have been playing in ukulele circles groups for about 9 years now. The music we use is a copy of the lyrics with the chords written along with the lyrics, so you know when to change chords.

There are lots of these song sheets available from various ukulele groups around North America. As we put out new songs, we print them and keep them in a 3 ring binder.

Over time the binder becomes full. So our group decided to print it’s own music book, that was over 100 songs, and in a spiral bound format. So now we had a book and a binder to carry around.

Then the group put out a second music book. Now we had two books and a binder to carry around. And they now have a third book too.

The problem with paper never goes away.

PDF Readers

I have been reading pdf files of various types for a number of years, and had heard of musicians now putting their music in a tablet that is now their music catalog.

I thought this would solve the problem of paper music, and having too much of it.

Old Tablet

I had an old tablet that I never did really use, and tried to get it working again. But the operating system would not boot, and it seems that repair places are not keen to work on tablets.

So I thought I will buy a new one that is inexpensive.

Low End Tablets

I found I could get tablets for as little as about $100. and up. I then started looking at models up to about $300, thinking I don’t want to get the cheapest one, as maybe there are other good features to have.

I thought I just want it for reading my music, nothing else, and I thought I would order it online.

I’ll Look at Some

We had an hour to kill and we went to a box store to look at tablet. A young sales clerk helped me out, and I was looking at the Apple iPad’s which are much more expensive than $300.

She pointed out a few things about Apple, and because I have an iPhone, I was getting sold. It aslso has Garage Band, a music creation program ! I use Mixcraft, but having Garage Band would be great too.

Bought the iPad

I thought, I will use this device every week in my playing, so why do I want to buy a cheap one. I decided to buy the iPad for about $550, plus tax and a case for the unit.

Up Sell

The sale clerk wanted to sell me on having them set it up for I think $160. I said No. She tries to sell on having a warranty on the unit. Again I said No.

Questions

I get the unit home, set it up on my own which was simple. Now I am wondering which PDF reader I should use. I search YouTube for videos on this subject and find a few that I watch.

Big Education

I got a big education on the PDF reader programs. They can do a lot more than just show a PDF file of your song.